As China’s People Rebel, Pope Francis Must Repent, by Jason Scott Jones

President George W. Bush once offered a reflection on gullibility and betrayal. He told a crowd “Fool me once, shame on … shame on you. Fool me … . You can’t get fooled again!’” The president managed to mash together an old saying that ends “Fool me twice, shame on me” with half-remembered lyrics from a Who song (“Won’t Get Fooled Again”).

A Bushian level of befuddlement must now prevail in the Vatican, as Pope Francis watches his hopeful alliance with China collapse into comprehensive failure. Francis’s right-hand man, Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, touted the Vatican’s secret agreement with China as a diplomatic coup, even praising the Communist regime as a better model of Catholic social teaching than Trump’s United States.

The deal which Ted McCarrick brought home from Beijing (just before being exposed for sex abuse and disgraced) was supposed to end decades of suspicion and hostility. The persecution which began with Mao Zedong was meant to give way to cooperation and build up trust. …